Friday, July 29, 2005

Dreaming

Remembering when I was invisible brought to mind a reaccuring dream I have. I get it about once a year and there doesn't seem to be a particular incident that brings it on or any special time of year that links to it.

I can breath underwater. Yep. As in a fish. But I'm not a fish, I'm me. I go into this warm, deep aquamarine sea with the sunlight shining through it's clearness and realize that I am having tightness in my lungs and I really should go up top now because I'm not a fish and I need to breathe air and I have no air tank or miraculous sci-fi re-breather, but it's just me and the fishes. I try to get to the sunlight, but I'm too deep, the fire in my lungs is screaming to be put out...so...I...breathe. I expect the pain of the water sucking into my body to be unbearable. I expect to gag, to try and cough. To expell the water I've just taken into an area of my flesh that it isn't supposed to get water. I've had enough experiences of choking on my own spit (yeah, you heard me right - and it's not pretty!) to know what having fluid in a place it's not supposed to be is usually not a good thing.

I don't choke. I don't feel like gagging. I don't feel anything, except the relief that I am no longer trying to hold my breath. The tension is gone and the movement of taking water in and letting water out feels very natural. I look around, figureing I must be dreaming and there is an air hose hooked up where I can't see it - or this water has been super-oxygenated somehow. I am a human breathing water. No way!

I never want to come out.

I've always liked the water, even though I live about as far from a coastline as you can get in this country. I've always felt at ease when I swim. I've never felt like a fish, though, or wanted to try the breathing water trick. I'll leave that for my dreams.